November 2024 Newsletter

A business’s greatest asset is its people. To foster success in the workplace, businesses must ensure that their employees have the tools and environment they need to do their best work.

For some employees with disabilities, these tools may include reasonable accommodations—modifications to the work environment or the way a job is customarily done that enable a disabled person to enjoy equal opportunity to do the work. Now, a powerful new tool from the ODEP-funded Job Accommodation Network (JAN) makes it easier than ever for employers and workers to identify potential accommodation solutions.

JAN’s “Situations and Solutions Finder” contains more than 700 examples of actual accommodations made by organizations of all sizes and in all industries, in both the private and public sectors. Users can search accommodations by disability, limitation or occupation and save the results.

Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, covered employers must provide reasonable accommodations for applicants and employees with disabilities, when requested, unless doing so would cause an undue hardship.

An accommodation can be anything from a piece of equipment (e.g., noise-canceling headphones) to physical changes to workstations (e.g., wheelchair accessibility) to flexible work schedules. Most accommodations are low cost. An analysis of survey data collected by JAN from employers between 2019 and 2024 reveals that about half of accommodations for workers with disabilities cost nothing to implement. For those accommodations that do incur a one-time cost, the median expenditure is only $300.

Because accommodations are individual by nature, users should know that not every example in the Situations and Solutions Finder may be effective for all people or workplaces. But learning about commonly used solutions will give employers and workers a head start in assessing their potential options.